“We cut you loose,” the junior man asked Faske, “we never hear from you again?”

“I had a grand in chips at the table ‘fore you dropped me. Cash me out and cut me loose, we have a deal.”

Senior man sat with the choice, puzzled through the permutations. “Fuck it,” he said, standing. “Pay you half and watch you leave, and that’s the offer.”

“Sold.”

Junior man cut the cords that bound Faske to the chair; Faske dashed to the office door and opened it. Ayao had been waiting outside. He strode in and slammed the senior staffman’s skull. Faske tossed the junior through a window.

“They ain’t even locked the cash away,” said Faske. Piles of green covered a table across the basement.

“Gurbin will be mighty pleased,” Ayao replied. “The only threat to his midtown club, up in smoke.”

“We warning them or crippling them?” said Faske.

“The cash comes with us and the tables burn. Call it what you like.”

~FIN~

About Daniel Gallant

Daniel Gallant is the Executive Director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe as well as a fiction writer, playwright and monologist. His short fiction and monologues have been published in anthologies from Vintage Books, Hal Leonards/Applause and TCG. Gallant's plays and monologues have been staged at venues including the 92nd Street Y, Summerstage, Galapagos, Dixon Place, HERE, the Howl Festival and Theater for the New City. He has appeared in shows on MTV, NBC, CBS, NY1, Univision, Fox News, the BBC and other networks, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Huffington Post, Time Out New York, the New York Post and Crain's New York.

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Established in 2011, Shotgun Honey provides crime fiction lovers a regular diet of flash fiction. Living by the simple tenet of keeping it lean and mean, Shotgun Honey has published over 800 flash fiction stories from more than 400 authors from around the world.